Adventist Health Wake-Up Call

Something to think about in the new year:

I took a few minutes this morning to peruse the December 2015 Adventist World and the January 2016 Outlook (Adventist Publication from Mid-America). Between the two publications, there were 3 articles expressing the same topic, the topic of health.

Adventists are KNOWN for their health message. Ellen White expresses the importance of taking care of our bodies to truly do what we are meant to do for Christ. She expresses the best benefits being from a plant-based diet, but how many of us actually follow that advice?

Since I’ve embarked on my own vegan journey, I’ve watched so many documentaries and so many times Loma Linda is listed – the Adventists are listed – for living longer than any other North American groups because of our vegetarian/vegan diets. If the rest of the world is noticing, then why aren’t we following our own message?

We are so quick to apologize for the many sins we accept: lying, envy, stealing, even having bad thoughts towards another. These sins are obvious. But is it not also a sin to avoid taking care of our own health?

Think back to the Garden of Eden, to God’s OPTIMAL design for us. We all know animals weren’t killed then. Everyone lived in harmony, both human and animals alike. We didn’t eat all of this junk food that we have now. We didn’t eat animal flesh. We didn’t eat eggs or drink milk. We had the beautiful fruit from the earth. That was the diet God intended.

Now, the world has continued to become degraded. Our soil quality is not what it used to be. You do need to eat vegetables, fruit, grains and legumes. But the key is, you can still get all the nutrients, even often better received by your body, with an animal-less diet. God hasn’t left us hanging. His diet is still here.

In fact, cultures and groups who eat minimal to no animal products suffer less disease and illness. Why do we put our bodies through this?

As a child, I thought all of these things were ok. But the more research I do, the more I realize how blind we are. The even scarier part is that we refuse to be truthful with ourselves. We don’t consider the fact that the devil can easily use food to get us. Think of all the junk food society craves. Have you ever wondered why the ingredients list is always 10+ items long? Most of them you don’t even know what they are. The food industry wants to get you “hooked” and they know what ingredients to use to do it. We are a society with a “health message” where the majority ignore the truth.

We all know the phrase we long to hear when Jesus returns, “Well done good and faithful servant”. But how many of us can He say that to when it comes to His very temples? These bodies are not ours and we must treat them as such. These bodies are God’s. We invite the Holy Spirit to live within us, and yet we treat His house like garbage.

I’m an avid exerciser, and no it’s not always fun. There are days I drag myself to the gym. But without exercise, my heart would not function like it should, my body would not carry me around like it should, and my health would not be in continuous progress like it is.

I also was a cheese addict. I went vegetarian cold-turkey when I was influenced by my first vegetarians. I remained that way for years, often considering going vegan, but never actually having the willpower to say no to cheese. If I could double cheese on anything and everything, you can bet that I did.

When I decided to go vegan, I went through cheese withdrawal for about a week. Who could have ever thought you could go through cheese withdrawal? But it happens because of the design of cheese. It is meant to be addictive. At times during that week, I had to make sure I had fruit in my hand to shove in my mouth so that I wouldn’t be tempted to eat the cheese. And now? I would never look back.

So where does this leave our society? In my opinion, uneducated. It doesn’t take an Adventist to see the benefits of plant-based diets. The science is spreading through the world like wildfire. Evidence is springing up with the results in peoples’ lives. Several doctors are realizing their lack of nutritional education and are starting to get involved. It’s time for us to learn it for ourselves, to understand the impact we are having on ourselves and others. Can you imagine rarely getting sick? Rarely having headaches? Rarely having to go to a doctor? It’s possible, you just need to want to embark on the journey that is not going to be fun at first.

We also need to remember that everything we do in life – EVERYTHING – is seen by our LORD. He knows our motives, He knows our hearts. Just as it’s not always easy to walk up to someone to share the message of Christ with them (especially if you’re expecting backlash), it’s not easy to want to change your habits. But as we see throughout the Bible and throughout the world still today, God’s call is not an easy one. God doesn’t even bring you to paths you can handle. Instead, He wants your heart to be earnest, and then to walk with Him on the path He wants you to take, even carrying you part of the way when necessary.

This is not meant to be a controversial topic. It is meant to be a reminder of truth, of a journey that I have been on myself lately. I’m not perfect either. Even though I was able to hear the call to better health, to realizing and beating my addiction to cheese, I need to get better at a whole food diet and ditch the convenient, pre-made vegan food that I have made a habit of eating.

Life is a journey and it’s never easy. If it was so easy to be healthy, everybody would be healthy. It takes determination, acceptance of what needs to be changed, and the willpower to do it. And even so, all of our efforts without Christ on our journey with us are of little use. Christ is the extra motivation that we need. Picture this: You know Jesus is coming to your house today. What would you do? I know I would be cleaning like mad, making sure it looked the best it could, and preparing the best food I absolutely could. Our bodies are no different. We invite the Holy Spirit in, but how many of us have cleaned internally? Are you feeding your body the best foods so it runs the healthiest and is the cleanest it can be? That is a question for serious thought.

I’m going to leave you with some quotes from Ellen White and the author of the article, “Adventists Urged to Examine Their Meals,” Andrew McChesney:

“We have had this information for more than 120 years, ” said Dr. Peter N. Landless, director of the Adventist world church’s Health Ministries Department. “Sadly, many have chosen not to follow the advice that has been given to God’s inspired servant, but it is always reassuring when one sees that that which is given by inspiration proven by peer-reviewed, evidence-based science.”

He added: “Our prayer is that our church will take note, not because this is an issue related to salvation, but because it affects the quality of life and our service to a broken world, the mission to which we have been called.”

“Flesh was never the best food; but its use is now doubly objectionable, since disease in animals is so rapidly increasing,” White wrote in the book Child Guidance. [You would be surprised how much diseased flesh is in your animal products today, since she said this so many years ago! Our world is corrupt and hides many things from us.]

White, who Adventists believe had the gift of prophecy, wrote in the same book that meat would become more contaminated as the earth neared its last days and that Adventists would stop eating it. “Flesh will cease to form a part of their diet,” she said. “We should ever keep this end in view and endeavour to work steadily toward it. I cannot think that in the practice of flesh eating we are in harmony with the light which God has been pleased to give us.”

I wish you all a happy, healthy 2016 as we prepare for the ever-closer coming of our LORD and Saviour. May we leave ourselves behind and put God first, no matter what journey He asks us to embark on. Because unlike many things in life, we know the end. We know that all the evil of the world will fade away, and Christ will reign in the best lives we can’t even possibly imagine. All of our unanswered questions will be answered, and we will no longer have to watch suffering take place. Our LORD will be with us, face-to-face, with the loving embrace that will bring happy tears knowing that everything we’ve suffered, everything we’ve endured, everything we’ve experienced will have all been worth it. I cannot wait to thank Him for all that He has brought me through, and for all that He has done for me. What a glorious day that will be!

Judgment: I’m Guilty of It Too

I’m going to make this post a lot shorter than I originally  intended. Mainly because I’m not quite as heated up about it as I was at the time I wanted to write about it.

A student asked me this week if I would rather have 15 hour days or 34 hour days. I have no idea why those two numbers were picked, but I would definitely rather have the 34 hour days because then I would have more time to do things AND more time to sleep. I see it being a double win!

Anyways, I was part of another conversation on Facebook, a couple different ones I guess. And one thing I noticed is that people were very quick to judge who I was, especially if they didn’t agree with my opinion. I got called a hypocritical vegan, racist, a selfish person, etc. And that’s fine if it were true, and maybe somewhere in my actions, I don’t realize I am slightly those ways, but here is what the people didn’t know, and I called them out on this.

They didn’t know that I’m not a hypocritical vegan. I grew up eating meat. I was vegetarian for many, many years and only went back to eating meat because of getting into bodybuilding and fitness. I then became so miserable that I went to what I thought was only natural and the best for you – vegan. Since then, I’ve educated myself and now refuse to buy anything related to animal products. I research everything and to any of my knowledge do not buy animal-based products, even to the extent I refused to buy a new vehicle with leather in it! I only buy vegan make-up products, self-care products, and even now that my blowdryer just died after 11 years, I’m researching vegan blowdryers. Hypocritical? I really don’t think so…

Now racist and selfishness came in the same conversation with the ever trivial topic of the Syrian refugees. My point was to be careful with who we let in. I wasn’t saying to never let any Syrians in, I wasn’t saying to ban all Middle Eastern people, I was simply saying to be careful. It’s no different with any other race in any other country. I mean, there are WHITE people from North America that have joined ISIS. Am I going to say we should let them come back to our country just because they’re white? Absolutely not. My entire point was to be careful, to do the proper screening so that we can assess who really needs help from those that are actually terrorists that are trying to sneak in, because regardless of whether we like it or not, we live in a time where things like fake passports are easily available, some that are not even distinguishable from real ones. But back to what they didn’t know.

They didn’t know that in high school, I willingly gave up Christmas to go to Peru on a mission trip and give my time, my labour, and gifts to other people much more needy than myself. And no, my parents did not pay for that trip. They may have helped some, but most of that was fundraising and my own high school job that helped pay the thousands of dollars to go and give some more. They didn’t know that throughout high school and university, I spent extensive amounts of time gathering things for those less fortunate, and serving the homeless through things like soup kitchens and simply setting up tables in the middle of the homeless areas downtown for them to come get coats and other warm items to wear. What they didn’t know is that when I see people begging outside of grocery stores or gas stations in need of food or gas money or whatever, I stop and ask what it is that they need and pay for things for them. What they didn’t know was that in university, I was on a Choir trip to California, and the group of us (50+) were walking the streets of San Francisco where a homeless man was holding out a hat for money. Some rude boy walked by (not from our choir) and threw the money all over the ground. The homeless man was disabled and was having an extremely difficult time trying to reach the money. So regardless of how many countless people I saw walk by him, I stopped and picked up the money for him to which he was extremely grateful for and ended up handing me a Christian pamphlet. I will never forget that. What they don’t know is that even though I’ve become much too busy in my life to do as much as I want to help others, my heart aches when I see the disasters and injustices going on in this world. I cry about it. I pray about it. I cannot wait for God to return and wipe out all of the evil there is. Yes, things are not fair and I hate that it has to be that way.

But these are all the things these judgmental people didn’t know about me because they didn’t take a chance to know where I come from. Am I guilty of this sometimes? Absolutely. I will never profess to be perfect because sometimes you make judgement calls in the heat of the moment. But more and more I am consciously trying to take a step back, learn abut the person or situation, and then take a stand. Too often we are too quick to jump on something that we think is right without knowing the whole truth at all.

Take the time to be educated before jumping to conclusions.

How Much Are We Affecting Our Children?

I saw a commercial tonight that struck me so differently than any other commercials before. All the time we see the World Vision commercials and other organization’s commercials that are reaching out with the dire situations of children all over the world. I support organizations that help others, don’t get me wrong. My father sponsored a child when we were younger who would write us letters with the aid of a translator. She would also send pictures of our money helping to clothe her and send her to school. Helping others is great and we should never become immune to the fact that others need our help. But it also can’t be denied that these commercials are common-day, and we are used to turning past them all the time.

The commercial I saw tonight hit home.

It was a commercial based on North America, on OUR children, on the damage WE do to them. And I just sunk in my chair (couch). It was a commercial that showed the pictures of women on magazines, in commercials, articles of the fastest ways to lose weight, and even a scene where one little girl asked another if she was ready for bikini season.

Wow.

You hear stories all the time of how these things affect women, but to think that they even affect little girls! But when you sit and think of it, how true it is! Many girls are worried about being popular in school, are bullied, are made fun of, etc… and the same thing goes for boys. They grow up seeing these images of what makes a “perfect woman/man” or a “perfect girl/boy” and at earlier and earlier ages, they are striving to look like this.

I have known it’s been an epidemic that girls are maturing earlier and earlier, I see this in school with the passing years and generations. I guess it never occurred to me the depth of diet and appearance on girls even as early as 8 or 9 years old! Possibly even younger! Is that what we want to do to our children?

I think it’s a way of teaching our children to grow up with insecurities. We are setting them up to attain images that are almost always photoshopped while always feeling not good enough.

We need to change this.

We need to raise our children knowing that they are good enough. Now that doesn’t mean feeding them a greasy pizza everyday. Make healthy eating fun. Incorporate as many fruits and veggies as you can daily so kids are not afraid to eat them and don’t grow up thinking they are boring and gross. Make being healthy and active a fun part of everyday life. And most importantly, give them so much love that they will know people’s opinions don’t matter. They are special and important and perfect just the way they are!